by John Carlin
Herr might not have made that point had he any notion of the tangles Pistorius would get himself into with women, or of the desperate fragility he had exhibited to the world. The Pistorius that Herr had met back in 2008 was as impressively steadfast in adversity as he was himself. Pistorius had also struck Herr as kind and gentle, he said. His reaction to the news that he had killed Reeva had been disbelief. ‘I’ve been around him quite a bit and I never saw any aggression in him,’ Herr said.
That would be another reason why he engaged energetically in the mission to overturn the Blade Runner’s ban, but the chief one was that he genuinely believed there was no legitimate case against him running a fair race against anyone. The Cheetahs were crude implements – ‘dumb, with no neural command’, Herr said – compared with the internally powered bionic devices Herr was using, never mind the exponentially improved ones that the future would hold in store. Herr enlisted the expertise of professors from Colorado University and Rice University to see if they could help him prove it to the satisfaction of the CAS.
More tests followed for Pistorius, along the same lines as the blade-testing routines in Reykjavik and the tests he had undergone in Cologne, but this time in a Rice University laboratory in Houston, Texas. Herr and his fellow scientists convinced themselves they had come up with more than enough data to refute the arguments of Dr Brüggeman and they delivered their findings to Marco Consonni, who in turn handed them on to Jeffrey Kessler, a well-known Manhattan lawyer enlisted by Consonni’s firm to present Pistorius’s case. In May 2008, Pistorius and his legal team traveled to the CAS in Lausanne to fight the ruling.
‘Professor Brüggemann’s main argument,’ Herr recalled, ‘was that the Cheetahs store and release more energy than human legs and therefore use less energy, but we showed that contention to be deeply flawed. The point is that running fast has to do with force, not energy return. Force is about the guy who slaps ground harder over less time. What we were able to demonstrate to the court was that Oscar hits the ground with less force with his Cheetahs than a runner with biological legs. It’s like running on a mattress instead of running on cement. There is no advantage.’
Herr’s team had conducted a study on what he called ‘unilaterals’, single-amputee runners, and established that the biological leg actually applied greater force than the Cheetah, which meant it produced a more powerful return spring. These findings impacted critically on the key IAAF argument that running with the blades required 25 per cent less energy consumption. ‘We measured how much energy was used in race conditions by Oscar and a biologically normal person and found no significant difference,’ said Herr.
The reason he was fast, Herr continued, was the same reason all other top runners were fast: ‘He cranked the frequency knob way up. His speed came from the incredible frequency of the movement of his legs.’
Employing the arguments provided by Herr and his peers, Jeffrey Kessler insisted before the CAS that his client’s natural talent was hindered, not enhanced, by the Cheetahs. There were clear disadvantages to using them. One was the speed out of the starting blocks, significantly slower than it was for able-bodied runners, because they pushed with their calf muscles, whereas with a two-leg amputee the impetus could only come from the hips. Another was running around bends, where keeping one’s balance was also measurably more difficult on prostheses than on natural legs.
These two arguments were accepted as common cause by the tribunal’s arbitrators, who then invited the athlete himself to deliver a final address. Marco Consonni recalled the five-minute speech.
‘Oscar was brilliant. He said he wished to take part in the Olympics because he did not wish to be set apart because of his disability. He said he wished to belong to the world, not be hidden away in a corner. He said he never saw himself as a disabled person and never felt disabled and did not want to be relegated forever to the ranks of disabled competition. He said he wanted to compete with normal people, because there he had real competition and a chance to improve his capabilities. He spoke intelligently, maturely, quietly and naturally. Kessler wept. I think everybody in the chamber was impressed and moved. I saw that day that Oscar touches people.’
The CAS tribunal informed Pistorius of their judgment by means of a fax sent to Consonni’s offices in Milan on May 16, two weeks after the hearing.
‘Quite by accident, Oscar was there with me at the precise moment a secretary called to tell me the verdict was coming through, and so was Peet van Zyl,’ Consonni recalled. ‘The suspense was terrible as I read the pages coming through, eighteen in all, and we waited for the last page with the final ruling. Then I shouted, “We won!” And Oscar and Peet went crazy, also shouting, “We won! We won! We won!” And we all hugged and jumped and screamed and cried like little kids. The way was clear at last for Oscar to run in the Olympic Games.’
The unanimous ruling of the three CAS arbitrators was that the ban should be overturned with immediate effect, the IAAF having failed to come up with the burden of proof necessary to demonstrate that Pistorius derived ‘an overall net advantage’ from using the Cheetah blades. It criticized the IAAF for failing to take into account the disadvantage in his inability to burst from the starting blocks as fast as his able-bodied competitors. It noted that the evidence assembled by Hugh Herr’s team showed that Pistorius used the same amount of oxygen as other runners and, far from expending less energy than his able-bodied rivals, ‘fatigued normally’.
Particularly satisfying to the jubilant threesome in Consonni’s office was a paragraph that read: ‘The Panel is reinforced in reaching this conclusion by the fact that the Flex-Foot Cheetah prosthesis has been in use for a decade, and yet no other runner using them – either a single amputee or a double amputee – has run times fast enough to compete effectively against able-bodied runners until Mr Pistorius has done so. In effect, these prior performances by other runners using the prosthesis act as a control for study of the benefits of the prosthesis and demonstrate that even if the prosthesis provided an advantage, and as noted none has been proven, it may be quite limited.’
That paragraph gave Pistorius special joy because it vindicated an argument he had repeatedly made when answering questions from the media, namely, ‘If the blades give so much of an advantage, then why aren’t other athletes who have them running as fast as me?’
Pistorius had got his way. He had taken on the highest authority in athletics, he had brushed aside the opinion of one of the greatest runners in history, and he had won his case. Never had he felt a more satisfying sense of vindication. He had proved his point. The phrase ‘I can’t’ did not exist in his lexicon. He himself might have been aware of the limits of his condition in his bed at night, with his prostheses off, but as far as the world at large was concerned he had no boundaries. That public persona was the one he cherished, the one he longed to believe represented his authentic self. The more ready the world was to recognize his all-conquering image, the more cemented became his idealized notion of who he was. In Lausanne in May 2008, when he obtained the endorsement of sport’s highest court, his public and private personas merged into one. He had gained confidence in the belief that he was who he said he was, a man defined not by his unusual disability but by his extraordinary talent.
He kept on believing it, success after success burying any notion of disability ever deeper in his, and the public’s, mind – until shortly after three in the morning of February 14, 2013, when Reeva’s death and his own life’s great catastrophe laid bare the deceit. Everyone has weaknesses and fears, everyone tries to disguise or repress them. Pistorius’s weaknesses and fears were extreme and he had disguised and repressed them by extreme means. He had pulled off a brilliant trick both on himself and on public opinion, but now, on the global stage where he had played out his life’s drama, he was exposed for all to see. Frantic and fragile, stumbling gun in hand on his little stumps in the dead of night, in killing Reeva he had killed his own myth.
Now he faced trial
for the second time. A court in Pretoria would have to judge whether the prosecution was right beyond reasonable doubt in its contention that he had known that the unseen individual at whom he had fired the four bullets was Reeva Steenkamp. Yet, for all the anguish and ignominy he endured, he retained just enough of his old self-belief to have faith that he could win this battle, too. He had got his way with the mighty IAAF. He could get his way again. After all, a year after that crowning moment at Lausanne, he had cheated death itself.
11
The great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, YOU NEVER CAN TELL
AWEEK AFTER Valentine´s Day 2009, South Africans woke up to the news that Oscar Pistorius was in a coma after a boat crash, apparently hovering between life and death. Four years later, some would stretch a point and recall the incident as one more piece of evidence pointing to crazed intent in the death of Reeva Steenkamp. But at the time, most responded with shock, distress and prayers for his recovery.
He and a male friend were on a speedboat on the Vaal River, fifty miles south of Johannesburg. Evening was falling and Pistorius was at the wheel. He never saw the jetty into which the prow slammed. The impact pushed his face hard into the wheel and launched the propeller high into the air. His friend, who was unharmed, stared at him aghast. Blood poured from one eye, tissue seeped from his mouth, a flap of skin had peeled off his nose. The hull had been breached and the boat was sinking fast. Pistorius jumped into the water and somehow swam to the river bank where he and his friend were dragged onto another boat. It was his good fortune that a cousin of his who was at medical school, one of Arnold Pistorius’s four daughters, had gone out with him that day and happened to be on the other boat. He was in shock and she calmed him down as best she could, but he remained alert enough to be in fear of his life. The boat moored at the nearest landing, an ambulance arrived, paramedics attended to him and he was airlifted to hospital in Johannesburg. He prayed the whole way. On arrival, doctors discovered that his jaw was broken, the bones of one eye socket were in smithereens, and he had broken several ribs and lost three liters of blood. He was given morphine and other sedatives to induce a coma, and then submitted to reconstructive surgery on his face. Three days later he awoke naturally from the coma in the intensive care unit to discover that he had 180 stitches on his face and his jaw had been wired shut. The doctors said they expected him to make a full recovery, but noted how extraordinarily fortunate he had been. It was a miracle he had not suffered permanent brain damage.
Chastened, he underwent two months of physical therapy and resumed light training seven weeks after the accident, in early April, armed with a new determination to socialize less and become more serious about his running. In Paralympics he reigned supreme, having won gold in the 100, 200 and 400 meters in Beijing the year before, but he had failed to run fast enough to qualify for the able-bodied Olympics, a big disappointment after the elation of winning the legal contest in Lausanne. Bringing his times down to compete in the Olympics in London in 2012 became his number one objective.
Speaking to the press in May, by which time he had fully recovered, he said he had lost thirteen pounds in weight since the accident and had a lot of muscle tone and physical endurance to rebuild. ‘In my mind, there have never been any barriers for me in sport,’ he said. ‘I don’t perceive myself as having a disability. I see only my ability.’
He did become more able, spending longer hours training, cutting out milk and red meat from his diet, limiting himself to a steady regime of fish, chicken and vegetables. Before the accident he had been drinking and eating like a normal person, now his body became leaner and more sculpted, his face – twelve months after the accident all signs of his injuries had disappeared – less chubby. Sobered by how close he had come to death, maturely aware that big potential sponsors were keeping a close eye on him and that there was a large monetary incentive to being able to perform at his peak, he made the shift, as his agent Peet van Zyl would note later, from amateur to professional.
Part of his new seriousness of purpose was displayed in his decision to train during the European summer, when most of his serious athletics competitions were held, at a European base. The place he chose in Italy served not only to tone his body but to calm his mind. He came to call it his home away from home.
He first visited Gemona del Friuli, a small town in the foothills of the Alps seventy miles north of Venice, in 2010. The mayor made him an offer he chose not to refuse. In exchange for becoming Gemona’s ‘ambassador’, which meant publicly associating his name with the town’s, he would be paid a nominal sum of 10,000 euros per year and have unrestricted use of the town’s new running track and sports facilities, plus free accommodation. It suited him well. Flying back and forth from South Africa to athletics meetings in England, Germany, Holland and elsewhere on the European continent was not only tiring and time-consuming, it was bad for his health. With long-haul flights he ran the risk of developing blood clots in his legs due to the airlines’ insistence that, for safety reasons, he keep his tight-fitting prostheses on from take-off to landing. The dryness of the air inside the plane also increased the chances of the skin at the end of his stumps becoming irritated. Gemona, an hour’s drive from Venice airport, offered him relatively short trips to his European destinations, minimizing the possibility of him arriving for races tired or in pain.
He made Gemona his base camp from May to September in 2011 and 2012. It was a neat, quiet, picture postcard Italian town of 12,000 people. A sheer mountain dramatically overhung a 700-year-old cathedral, and a castle stood on a spot where ramparts were first built in the seventh century. Gemona’s more recent, and unhappy, claim to fame was an earthquake in 1976 that had killed 400 people, left thousands homeless and devastated the town’s ancient buildings. It took a decade for the cathedral to be restored; the castle was still being rebuilt when Pistorius installed himself thirty-five years later.
The people of Gemona saw in him a mirror of themselves. They were survivors. Not given to self-pity, they had overcome the consequences of natural disaster by dogged persistence. The town’s motto could have been written for the man he tried to be when he stayed there: ‘Senza lacrime a denti stretti’ – ‘without tears, with gritted teeth’. Gemona was a place where sloth was despised and hard work was the highest virtue. The inhabitants’ attitude to life had more in common with that of their Austrian neighbours, across the mountains to the east, than with the dolce vita associated with their southern compatriots.
The three-star family hotel where Pistorius stayed was the Hotel Wily, the name deriving from the nickname the original owner, Guillermo Goi, had acquired when he lived in Germany half a century earlier. His granddaughter, Luisella, ran it now, with her aging father and assorted relatives in perpetually busy attendance.
Luisella asked Pistorius when he arrived whether he wanted the one room of the fifty-four in the hotel that been adapted for people with disabilities, but he replied, much in the spirit of his mother when they had first met the headmaster of Pretoria Boys High, that there was no need to make any special allowances for him. He could get by as well as any man. She gave him room 201, the most spacious one she had – but, in keeping with the hotel’s unassuming style, a world away from the plush suites he stayed in when he attended race meetings in London or Berlin. It was a spartan room with none of the period character one might have expected in a town ornamented with Renaissance architecture. The wood panelling was fake; the floor, linoleum. There was a double bed with a thin mattress and two rickety single beds, unremarkable framed pictures on the walls, the largest a stock portrait of the Virgin Mary, and a small television set. The window looked onto the hotel car park. But the bathroom was something else altogether. Strikingly at odds with the unpretentious functionality of the hotel, Pistorius had at his disposal an ample shower cubicle with two spouts facing each other across the two side walls and a third one at waist height. All manner of lev
ers and buttons offered a confusing variety of watery possibilities, from gentle drizzle to stabbing squirts to thunderous cascades.
During his stay at the Hotel Wily he did not share the shower with anybody else. The person appointed by the municipality to interpret for him and attend to his everyday needs, a slim and attractive young English-speaking local called Anna Pittini, said that he remained celibate during his stays in Gemona, determined to spend his time there in professionally monkish solitude. (Peet van Zyl would describe his life in Gemona later as that of ‘a running monk’.) Pittini was the one person in the town in whom he confided, chatting to her about his family, the loneliness of his world travels and the difficulty of being so far away from his girlfriend, Samantha Taylor – whom he missed, but who also stirred a jealousy in him that he tried to control, but could not. Rumours spread in Italian gossip magazines that he and Pittini were having an affair, but she said they were nonsense. More innocent of the wider world, but capable of seeing deeper into him than he into her, she became like a sister to him in Gemona, the trust that developed between them reaching such a point that once he allowed her into his hotel room when he had his artificial legs off. She was taken aback at how short he was, how odd-looking on his thin stumps, but she was grateful to him for having given her what she felt was the intimate gift of revealing his vulnerability.
Anna Pittini was, as she described it, his ‘shadow’ during the months he spent in Gemona, and his daily routines almost became hers.
‘He would wake up at about 7.30,’ she recalled. ‘He would go down for breakfast to the hotel restaurant and have lots of eggs, but only egg whites. He would have a shake too, with nuts and berries. He had a shaker in his room where he made his own blends. After breakfast he would go back to his room to rest or contact friends back in South Africa on his computer and then he would head off to the track.’
